Thursday, May 14, 2020

Death & Dying


Are we all just dying, day by day, with each day representing one less day of adventures in our future? Or are we instead awakening each morning to a new set of life experiences, so that each day is a potential wonder, telling us that we are alive with wonderful possibilities? I think such thoughts whenever I think about yet another COVID death, or, worse yet, another Ahmaud Arbery.  I think that killing someone is stealing from them all the life experiences they would have had. You are taking their future away from them.  And we don’t know anything about those years we are stealing, the wonder, even the majesty of those years.

I awaken each morning, and I know what will happen to me directly or to the world.  That is, the sun will rise in the early morning, with or without cloud cover. Then the sun will pass over head, and make its pathway to dip below the horizon, signaling eventide.  There will be a few meals in between, some chit chat, maybe a phone call or two, some evening TV fare, and then back to bed.  But that’s for me. For that young man, Mr. Arbery, he took pleasure in each day taking a nice run. I used to run a lot when I was younger, so I understand the pleasure one can take in a nice run of several miles.  And I am certain he was enjoying his run, until he encountered two racists from a neighborhood, a father and his racist kid.  Much like Trayvon Martin, Mr.  Arbery was unaware that fate weighed against him that day.  The two racist pigs decided that he, being Black, was a threat to their neighborhood and so, they encountered him, began a scuffle, and then shot him to death.  Being White, they then of course decided that the entire incident was caused by Mr. Arbery, and they were forced to kill him in self-defense. The fact that it took a personal video by a local neighbor, a video that went viral after it was released, to even get the local police to act on the killing tells you perhaps everything you need to know about America in 2020.

So, now these two White murdering dudes basically stole from Mr. Arbery perhaps 50 years of life experiences . . . maybe 50 years of a love affair with a wife and children and hopefully grandchildren.  A lifetime of laughter, and loving. Maybe a successful working career in which he contributed to the betterment of our planet.  Maybe exotic travels to faraway places. Little things, like fine meals with family, opening a fine bottle of wine and sharing it with his wife.  Receiving praiseworthy notes from a boss on a job well done.  Birthday laughter, celebrating the coming of the New Year.  All the hundreds of things we think of when we imagine LIFE.  Think of what they stole from him. That’s 50+ years, 18,250 days, 438,000 hours of life’s experiences.  And they thought to justify such a gigantic theft of Life, because they imagined he was a threat to their community?? Think of the hubris that created that moment of terror for the young Black man.  These two little subhumans were armed, and therefore used their arms to steal that life. It is perhaps the best argument I can imagine for removing guns from humans. Because so many humans and subhumans cannot handle weapons with any degree of security for the rest of us. Armed, such subhumans are always a threat to humanity.

And then we arrive at our present mess—the Pandemic of 2020. Here, we mostly don’t have subhumans taking up arms, well aside from places like Michigan where our idiot malenfant president has urged the locals to protest, vigorously the government’s orders to remain at home until it is safe to move about. The heavily armed subhumans care not for such logic.  Like predatory sharks, they prefer wandering our streets with their armaments, in search of “threatening” people, mainly threatening Black or Hispanic people.

The Pandemic seems to have unlocked the crazy part of some folks’ brains. They apparently can’t stand being told what to do, even when it is in their own best interest.

Now, if we had a real president, one with a functioning brain and some actual ethical principles, we might not have such idiots roaming our streets with guns raised. No, a real president would be calming the people, and would be using actual data, real logic, and intelligent rhetoric to inform and calm the public.  But we don’t have a real president. We have a fake one, one who is desperately afraid that the pandemic will spell the end of his dream job, and will get in the way of his family stealing from our public storehouse of money reserves. See, he had hoped to end all of those financial failures he experienced and he and his family would be able to retire to some nice palace somewhere under Soviet protection.  Now, he may have to return to his miserable little pseudocriminal enterprises and act out his crappy marriages, perhaps even entering a 4th, 5th or 6th marriage before he finally bites the bullet of life and his breathing ceases.

But in the meantime, our Nation may well come to an end. He has so thoroughly destroyed the very fabric of our society that we may never be able to return to that place of high potential it held only 5-10 years ago.  He has, in short, done to America what he did to most of his financial enterprises, and brought us to the point of possible ruin. Whether we can recover is at least debatable. 

He has brought us to a point that we have not seen since the mid-1860s.   May we do better than we did the last time.

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